Am I the only one who is bothered by one of the races listed being "trees." As Treebeard said: "Tree? TREE? I am no tree. I'm an ent." Also, the entwives were mentioned, but not individuals by name, as they had gone missing. It was suggested that perhaps the moving trees in the Shire were the entwives.

And how are you supposed to tell the difference between dwarf men and women anyway? Sure, most of them are said to be male, but otherwise, it's kinda hard to tell...

The percentage of female characters in LotR is probably similar to the number of women Tolkien interacted with on a given day. It's a sausage fest because early-twentieth century Oxbridge was a sausage fest.

Um, the Maiar and Valar, iirc, do not reproduce in any fashion that could be mapped onto human sexuality, and only wear human forms because of the old "a form you are comfortable with". Note Sauron's remarkable lack of giving a shiat.

Jim_Callahan:Um, the Maiar and Valar, iirc, do not reproduce in any fashion that could be mapped onto human sexuality, and only wear human forms because of the old "a form you are comfortable with". Note Sauron's remarkable lack of giving a shiat.

I don't think the Valar or Maiar actually reproduce with each other. It's been about a year since I read The Silmarillion last, but I think Melian was the only Ainur to have children, and that was with an elf, not another Ainur.

How do you know that half the dwarves in the story aren't female? They may just use male pronouns generically. Hell, maybe they are all female and only worthless drones are male and die after fertilizing the dwarf "king." It could be that the stupid humans are so bigoted that the Dwarves keep them in the dark about the whole thing and pretend to be all men.

Or we could pretend that a hundred year old book should not automatically reflect modern sensibilities.

What a stupid article. Yes, let's examine a story written in the 40s, set in a fictional medieval society that (like real historical societies) had strong traditional gender roles, covering events that those roles would have forbidden women to participate in, and then criticize it for featuring mostly male characters. What a brilliant idea.

Oh, and let's conveniently ignore the strong female characters of Eowyn and Galadriel. And, since the subject of the Valar came up, let's also ignore the fact that the only Valar whose name and protection are repeatedly invoked in LotR is female (and yes, the Valar/Maiar do have male and female natures, though in their cases it's represented as a spiritual trait rather than a physical one).

The insurance actuarial did a run down on the effect of too many sexy LOTR female characters on screen. The conclusion was that the nerd audience would either suffer cardiac arrest......or soil the movie theater seats with biological contaminants.

I think its fair to say they left female dwarves out because it might be seen as insensitive to feminists.